Many small business owners are struggling with debtors not paying their debts on time and this has an extremely negative impact on cash flow. Outstanding debts can literally break a business and debt collection is often something that business owners don’t consider for various reasons.

There are a few misconceptions about debt collection agencies in South Africa, and without clarity on these matters, business owners avoid seeking assistance from professional debt collectors.

In this article, we bust 3 major myths about debt collection in South Africa so that you can understand why it’s important to hire an agency to help you recover outstanding debt for your business.

What’s Stopping You from Hiring a Debt Collection Agency?

You’re Afraid of Losing Your Customer

As a small business owner, you know how important customer satisfaction is, and you do whatever you can to retain all your customers because your success depends on customer loyalty. For this reason, you are concerned about sending a debt collector to collect their outstanding debts.

Firstly, it’s important to remember that outstanding debt can be hugely detrimental to your business and can compromise your growth. Debt can be more damaging than potentially losing a customer who is not committed to paying on time.

However, what’s more important to remember is that debt collection agencies are required to stick to a strict code of ethics and conduct when carrying out their debt collection services. Debt collectors are by law not allowed to harass debtors in an attempt to collect debt. With this in mind, we can see that using a debt collector is unlikely to chase away your customers. Instead, it’s a very necessary part of running a successful business.

You Believe That It’s Not Worth the Effort

You may have been struggling for some time to get your debtors to pay up and have been unsuccessful until now but that doesn’t mean that debt recovery is impossible. Maybe you think that the outstanding amounts are not big enough and don’t warrant pursual.

However, every amount adds up to a much larger amount which can quite literally make or break your business. Debt recovery is absolutely crucial and hiring a debt collector means that your debtors are more likely to settle their debts with you. They might not take your requests seriously, but in our experience as professional debt collectors, most debtors settle their amounts after the first request made by a debt collection agency. It’s definitely worth it.

Only Big Companies Use Debt Collectors

Although it is true that big companies use debt collectors, it’s not true that debt collection agencies cannot assist smaller, privately owned businesses. In fact, smaller businesses should be making use of debt collection services because they are far more financially vulnerable than larger corporate companies. In fact, some debt collection agencies in South Africa specialize in debt collection for small businesses because they understand the impact outstanding debt has on a business’ cashflow. Debt collectors have the skills and resources necessary to get your debtors to pay the dues, even if it means negotiating a payment plan which will set your incoming cash flow back into motion. Some incoming money is better than none.

Able Tracers – Debt Collection Services in South Africa

Although our head office is situated in Gqeberha, we are able to offer our professional debt collection services to the whole of South Africa.

We encourage small business owners to seek the assistance they need to successfully collect outstanding debt. There is no debt too small or too big for us and we endeavor to bring you peace of mind knowing that your debt problems are taken care of while you focus on running a successful business.

Contact us to find out more.